INTRODUCTION
Having emptied our hearts of some of the clutter of the world, we reflect in these days on the importance of the heart. The heart is where we find our real self. We make our ascent to union with God particularly with our heart. The centrality of our heart in Christian spirituality reveals the affective dimension of love and prayer. We learn to pray from the heart, listening to God and even abiding with Him there in the deep interior center of our soul. A prayer of simplicity, of pure receptivity is a prayer of abiding from the heart. We could even say that “I am my heart” and we learn to listen to the thoughts of our hearts. Our Christian faith permeates us our whole being as we learn to see with the eyes of our hearts. This week we focus on our hearts in its movements, thoughts, stillness and as an abiding place for God in the Spirit. We take these days to reconnect with the heart so that we can open our hearts in the coming weeks to the hearts of Jesus, Mary and Joseph.
Day 6: The Heart is Where We Find the Real Self
READING 1
Matthew 6:19-21
Jesus said, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
READING 2
From The Heart: An Analysis of Human and Divine Affectivity by Dietrich von Hildebrand
In order to understand the nature of the heart, we must realize that in many respects the heart is more the real self of the person than his intellect or will.
In the moral sphere it is the will which has the character of a last, valid word. Here the voice of our free spiritual center counts above all. We find the true self primarily in the will. In many other domains, however, it is the heart which is the most intimate part of the person, the core, the real self, rather than the will or the intellect. This is so in the realm of human love: conjugal love, friendship, filial love, parental love. The heart is here not only the true self because love is essentially a voice of the heart; it is also the true self insofar as love aims at the heart of the beloved in a specific way. The lover wants to pour his love into the heart of the beloved, he wants to affect his heart, to fill it with happiness; and only then will he feel that he has really reached the beloved, his very self.
Furthermore, when we love a person and long for a return of our love, it is the heart of the other person which we want to call ours.
REFLECTION
The Second Vatican Council teaches that “man… cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.”1 Furthermore we cannot make a sincere gift, unless we are self-possessed. And we cannot be self-possessed unless we have self-knowledge. And, as von Hildebrand explains, this knowledge, possession and gift are matters of the heart. To use Jesus’s image, the heart is where we keep our treasures. And it is in sharing those treasures that we share our hearts.
Our hearts are complicated and the process of self-knowledge and self-possession are ongoing aspects of our human formation. We struggle to know our hearts because we also struggle to accept what we find there. Our dreams, desires, hopes and loves can be too vulnerable, and when we are wounded by rejection and disappointment, they can end up buried beneath disordered desires, distractions, addictions, impulses and compulsions. These areas become shrouded in shame and difficult to face.
This return to the heart is a necessary step towards truly finding ourselves by making a sincere gift of ourselves. And this is a necessary pre-requisite for cultivating deeper intimacy with the hearts of Jesus, Mary and Joseph.
PRAYERS
Litany of the Wounded Heart
Radiating Christ
- Gaudium et Spes x 24. ↩︎
Consecration to the Heart of Jesus Through the Hearts of Mary and Joseph
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